I have already made known my feelings about the white supremacists who gathered in Charlottesville.

Their idiocy is overshadowed only by their moral depravity. The one thing they lack more than jobs and girlfriends is a semi-coherent understanding of history. How many of these neo-Nazi punks even realize that Hitler would have marched them to the gas chambers right alongside the black and Jewish Americans they despise? How many of them had grandfathers and great grandfathers who stormed the beaches to defeat the very movement they now wish to resurrect? Part of me hopes their grandfathers are dead so they don’t have to witness what’s become of their families. Part of me hopes they’re alive so they can take their canes and swat these brats across the head. I don’t condone violence, unless it’s a WWII vet delivering a grandfatherly whooping to his vile, ungrateful Nazi grandson.

It would be very difficult to go too far in criticizing the sorts of “men” who rallied this weekend. I am forced to put the word “men” in quotes because they are only men in the most literal sense. In any other sense, they are cowardly, pathetic little boys desperate for attention. I am not interested in hearing, as I have heard from some people, that these imbeciles were “driven” to this point because of all the racism and hatred on the Left. There is racism and hatred on the Left — a lot of it, and we’ll get to that in a second — but that does not even begin to excuse them.

I have said for years that Leftists ought to be able to express their disapproval of a police shooting without burning down a convenience store. That really is not a high bar to hurdle. In the same way, these people ought to be able to protest racial double standards or Confederate statue removals without becoming actual Nazis. To answer racism or perceived racism by becoming racist is about the dumbest and most indefensible response possible. This applies to the racists on both sides of the fence. Both feel they are justified in acting this way because people on the other side are acting this way. I am so tired of that demented, third grade logic that I could vomit. If you want to be the good guy, you need to be better. If you have no desire to be better, then you are just as rotten as whatever evil or perceived evil you purport to oppose.

On that note, it must be emphasized that the despicable beliefs and actions of white supremacists do not vindicate those on the left who have been rioting in cities and on college campuses across the country and committing acts of senseless brutality and politically motivated violence for years now. There are those who want to pretend that the Nazi terrorist coward who got in his car and plowed through a crowd on Saturday did something unprecedented. Sadly, that is not the case. Have we already forgotten about the Black Lives Matter march in Dallas that ended with five Dallas police officers being executed in the street? Or the many hundreds of police officers and journalists and citizens who’ve been beaten or pelted with rocks at leftist “protests”? Or the business owners who’ve had their stores looted and torched? Are we really going to pretend that none of that ever happened?

I do not bring this up in order to minimize the most recent terrorist atrocity, but to paint a more complete picture of the situation. It is especially important that we look at the whole picture, because that picture is only going to get worse. Leftist rioters now feel validated, so they will grow bolder and more dangerous. These alt-right racists and Nazis are equally as unlikely to have a change of heart. Back and forth we will go, as our culture circles the drain.

You will notice one thing as our death spirals get faster and faster: the terrorists on both sides will become ever more indistinguishable. As they clash with one another in the streets, it will be hard to tell one from the other. The only thing that will mark them as distinct is the flag they carry. But apart from that swastika or that hammer and sickle, they will be — and currently are — virtually identical.

Indeed, the similarities between the alt-right white supremacist and the leftist Antifa thug are impossible to miss:

-They are both obsessed with identity politics.

-They are both racist.

-They are both fascist authoritarians who care more about dominating the opposition than protecting the freedoms of all Americans.

-They are both lonely and desperate for attention.

-They are both nihilists.

-They both lack purpose or direction in their lives.

-They are both morally defective.

-They both could have used stronger male role models growing up.

-They both are driven by equal parts hatred and boredom.

And so on.

These degenerates mirror each other in just about every way. They are each other. They are twins, separated by circumstance and reunited in the streets where they throw rocks and fists at their own reflections. I am not convinced that either group really cares all that much about their respective ideologies. I think they mostly just want to shout at people and burn stuff. Nihilism and indifference is what fuels them. The problem is not that they care too deeply about an issue, or even that they care in the wrong way and about the wrong things, but that they don’t care about much of anything at all. They have led aimless and directionless lives, and in the banners they have taken up, and the chaos they bring to our cities, they find a little spark of life in their darkened souls. They find something to do. A purpose. Even more important: an enemy. And the enemy they have found is exactly like themselves.

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